Towns

chickens

It was hard to tell which came first in the hearts of Islanders last Sunday — the chicken or the egg. The Coop de Ville Tour sponsored by Slow Food Martha’s Vineyard offered the opportunity for an egg-centric brunch followed by tours of chicken operations on several farms around the Island. All the chicken love had a purpose, too, according to the people at Slow Food Martha’s Vineyard.

Roasted chicken is a comfort food I enjoy any time of the year. It is a simple pleasure that is accessible and easy for nearly all home cooks and provides a cost-effective meal for the whole family or for the individual with leftovers to be eaten for days and a carcass to be coaxed into a stock with endless potential. Even when purchasing a local bird for the average price of $5 a pound and up, the price per serving, with leftovers and soup included, is still in most shoppers’ price range.

What came first — the chicken or the egg? It’s one of those questions that has plagued the human race for ages, but Up-Island Eggs owner Katherine Long settled the debate on Friday afternoon as she was giving her chickens a treat of corn.

“The thing that laid an egg wasn’t a chicken, the thing that hatched out of the egg was the chicken,” Ms. Long said. “Whatever laid the egg first was something else. The egg came first.”

Legend has it raccoons were brought to the Island as a front for hunters to, as they say, “jack” deer at night. As the story goes, if a warden caught someone hunting at night, the hunter would claim he was after raccoons rather than trying to stock up on some after-hours venison.

In the long run this ploy did not work out so well for the rest of us. Raccoons tear apart our garbage at night and, more devastatingly, they go after our chickens with reckless abandon.